Eastern State Penitentiary, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
The castle-like Eastern State Penitentiary took solitary confinement to new levels when it was built…
The castle-like Eastern State Penitentiary took solitary confinement to new levels when it was built in 1829. Prisoners lived alone, exercised alone, and ate alone; when an inmate left his cell, a guard would cover his head with a hood so he couldn’t see or be seen. The prison had to abandon its solitary system…
Alabama’s first capital and famous ghost town takes its name from the state’s longest river, situated at the confluence of the Cahaba and the Alabama. It was abandoned after the Civil War, and its empty buildings, slave burial ground, and eerie cemeteries are now popular settings for ghost tours and stories of paranormal activity. The most famous tale is…
Those of you who remember the ’90s will recognize this cemetery as the one featured in the novel Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Like the book, the Savannah cemetery itself has a Southern Gothic atmosphere, with Spanish moss giving shade to time-worn Victorian monuments. There are many notable figures buried here, like singer Johnny Mercer…
Once home to 10,000 people, Bodie boomed in the 1870s and ’80s, when gold was found in the hills surrounding Mono Lake. It’s now a State Historic Park, with some parts of the town preserved in a state of “arrested decay”—tables with place settings, and shops eerily stocked with supplies. It’s not surprising that there are…
The most famous of cemeteries in Arizona, and one of the most notorious in America, is Tombstone’s Boothill Graveyard. Established in 1878 with the whirlwind formation of the surrounding boomtown, it provided the city’s deceased with a final resting place for only six years before it was replaced by the current cemetery. Yet, it acquired…
Parkersburg, West Virginia is home to The Weeping Woman, a graveyard statue that is the focal point of dozens of local legends. The following are a few of the letters we’ve received detailing this impressive statue’s fantastic tales. In Parkersburg, West Virginia there is the legend of the statue of “The Weeping Woman.” The statue…
The grave of Lilly E. Gray stands in the Salt Lake City Cemetery. It’s a simple, plain flat stone that lists here birth date and death date (June 6, 1881 and November 14, 1958). It’s what’s written next to these figures than makes this stone legendary: Victim of the Beast 666. That’s all that is…
They say love is fleeting, but one resident of Hiawatha, Kansas, set out to prove them wrong. When Sarah Davis died in 1930, her loving husband John Milburn Davis began erecting a memorial unlike any other. The Italian marble memorial in Mount Hope Cemetery contains statues depicting Sarah, John, and a few others, and was…
The giant girl statue in Silver Creek, NY, is named “Dolly Dimples”. I grew up there and saw that statue my whole life. Just thought you would like to know her name. She has been there for the 30 years I’ve been in the area. I think she came from a drive in restaurant down…